My Son Wears Pink
A funny thing happened this week that completely challenged my subconscious. Let me first give you some context. In a couple of weeks the kids and I will be headed on a Michigan vacation with my parents. We’ll be lake-hopping and spending the majority of our time in the water and out in the sun. In preparation, my mom and I were doing some online shopping to make sure the kids had the proper sun-gear to make it through the trip without the risk of future skin cancer.
Beckett is getting to an age where we often times will allow him to have a say in the design and aesthetics of the things we get him. The moment came when we were getting each of the kids a sun hat. The options were pretty limited for Cadence’s size so I grabbed the only solid-colored one they had which happened to be pink. I then bumped up the options to a size medium, which had many more patterns and colors, and called Beckett over to choose his own hat. He looked through the options and excitedly announced that he chooses the solid bright pink hat!
My immediate reaction was to show a forced, gritty smile and to hesitantly say “...okay… are you sure?”
“Yes!” He shouted, “I’m sure!” And then he ran off to continue playing.
I paused, not adding the hat to my cart but also not dismissing his request altogether. Why did I have a problem with him favoring the pink hat? Honestly as I reflected, I had no concrete reason. The only hesitation I had was this irrational assignment society has drilled into me that pink is supposed to be for girls. I thought about the fact that other parents will see my son with a pink hat on and might think that it is strange.
I dug deeper.
I certainly have never cared about how other parents may view our family, and I wasn’t planning on starting today. How silly is it that we make people believe that a color is capable of being gender exclusive anyways? Beckett has always said that his favorite color is green and his other favorites are pink and white. What does this mean? It means that those colors naturally appeal to his eye. Who am I to tell him differently?
I thought back to the other times he’s asked for pink things. Like that time we were at a carnival giveaway and he asked me to put his raffle ticket into the pink bike basket, but I snuck it into the superhero bike basket instead.
After becoming momentarily disgusted at my hesitation, I quickly added his medium pink hat to my cart and turned to him to exclaim, “Beckett! You and baby are going to get to match on vacation! How fun will that be!”
His face lit up.
Our household will no longer be assigning colors to our children just so they fit into what is deemed acceptable by society. In fact, we won’t be altering any of their likes and preferences in an effort to make them “normal.” Because if there’s one thing I for sure don’t want, it’s for my kids to be raised on a belief that they have to change who they are in order to fit in with a make-believe standard of normalcy.